Mike Bloomberg Wants To Ban Styrofoam

If 2012 was the year Mayor Mike crushed the (apparently second) greatest evil in society: super-size sugary drinks, in 2013 he has found a new target in his neverending nanny-state vendetta: the pure, concentrated evil that is styrofoam.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will propose a ban on Styrofoam, the substance commonly used for take-out food containers that is almost impossible to recycle.

The mayor who has already targeted fat, sugar and salt in the city will turn to extruded polystyrene foam, saying it clogs up landfills, does not biodegrade and might harm human health.

Styrofoam, he says, should go the way of lead-based paint, which the city banned from residential use in 1960. An estimated 20,000 tons of Styrofoam enter the city's waste stream each year, and it can add an estimated $20 per ton to the cost of recycling because it needs to be removed from the recycling stream, the city said.

"After all, we can live without it. We may live longer without it. And the doggie bag will survive just fine," the text of Bloomberg's speech says.

Dow Chemical Co, which makes Styrofoam, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Similar bans have been adopted in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

The plan was likely to meet opposition from small businesses, since alternatives to Styrofoam tend to cost between two and five times as much.

"As this proposal moves forward, we hope that the concerns of the small businesses it affects - like cost increases - will factor in at least as heavily as environmental concerns," said Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the New York Restaurant Association.

Since it is pretty meaningless to comment on this latest stupidity (as there will be plenty of other opportunities to do so in Mike's 4th, 5th and 6th terms as mayor), here is the Mayor himself presenting this brilliant idea to the masses.